On our first night in Ho Chi Minh City, we did a "Saigon After Dark Tour", which involves riding on the back of a vespa through city traffic, stopping to drink, eat, and listen to music at various spots. (Note: Saigon is the old name of Ho Chi Minh City - the locals still use Saigon quite often because it's much shorter).
This is the website of the tour we did. If you're ever in Ho Chi Minh City, I highly recommend it: http://vespaadventures.com/product/saigon-foodie-night-tour/
Here we are, ready to go! (just posing, we didn't really drive)
And here's Martin on his bike later:
Just waiting in the huge hodge-podge of motorbikes that exist at any intersection in the city:
Here's a video of what the experience of riding through traffic in HCMC is like:
So it's a definite life experience here.
The tour starts off at a bar, created by and for this tour, I believe, where you are rushed through a cocktail (if you're really really fast you can fit in two cocktails). It's all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink but you're on a schedule the entire night so it's hard to over-imbibe. I don't have any pics of the bar, sorry. We were there for like 5 minutes!
We were put into a group with another American couple and a British couple. I don't know if people are always put into groups like this or not - it seemed there were some couples on their own and other big groups so I have no idea how it's organized. The other two couples were both great fun for the evening so I'm glad we were all put together.
Our second stop was a fish place. This place seemed pretty authentic (meaning it wasn't created by the tour company) as it was filled with locals. Here we were force-fed dish after dish after dish. Crabs, mussels, some sort of soup, a noodle dish ... Everything was delicious but many things are quite spicy here so beware of that. The one thing that annoyed me was when our tour guide told us something was chicken ... and it was really frog. She called it "jumping chicken". Sigh. So, now I've eaten frog, and so has the poor other guy in our group who only eats kosher who was also fooled by our guide saying chicken.
Here are some pics from the fish place:
Next up was a vietnamese pancake place. Remember the yellow pancake we ate on our food tour in Phnom Penh? (no? why not? lol) This was the same thing. Still delicious. We also had some fresh and deep fried spring rolls here, and snails! I didn't eat any of the snails but the British guy ate a whole plateful to make up for that.
Our fourth stop was a coffee shop where there was some nice live acoustic music. The singers were very talented but the piano player was amazing. Just sayin'. I asked our guide and she confirmed that these are all music students honing their skills. I'm not sure if this cafe was created by the tour company or the music school or if it's really authentic, but it was, in my opinion, the best stop of the tour. Below are a few pics and then a video of one of the performers.
And our final stop was a bit louder and more rock and roll:
The singer changed every 3 songs so we got to hear a lot of different types of music. Some classic rock, some rap, and some more modern rock. It was a fun atmosphere. But, ever on a schedule, after an hour, we left and returned to our hotel. Which was good because I was tired. This touring is exhausting.
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